I actually worry that this will make people think, more incorrectly, that Monoids are about appending stuff only.<div></div></blockquote></div><div><br>I think that adding a graphical operator as a synonym for mappend would actually help to address that, since the magic word &quot;append&quot; would no longer be nearly as common in source code, and that textual name certainly is (unhelpfully) suggestive of a specific semantics.<br>

</div></div>
</blockquote></div><br><div>Yeah the textual name doesn&#39;t help one bit. Much like &quot;return&quot; confuses folks in Monads. However, I think most people learn Haskell in stages where ++ is introduced as an append operation *before* they even come across the term &quot;Monoid&quot;. I feel that though this may have a lesser degenerative impact on the newbie&#39;s ability to learn Monoids, that it still contributes to the confusion a bit.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Then again, anyone who&#39;s had to deal with overloaded operators in any language should learn never to assume anything about overloaded operators... </div><div><br></div><div>Dave</div>